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No offence...
How is that a nation state (the CSA) the founding documents of which entrench the right of members of one racial group to own members of another (and not vice versa) can be viewed as anything other than racist?
Our friend here appears to be under the delusion that the CSA was founded on the noble philosophical principle of states' rights, which was of course completely separate from slavery and racism.
"which was of course completely separate from slavery and racism." --Blue (is useful)
I didn't say it was SEPERATE from slavery and racism, what I mean by "Nor do I believe the Confederacy was racist" means that I don't believe that is mainly founded on slavery. I know that it WAS a racist state, however, so was the US when it was founded(most of the founding fathers owned slaves) and we don't say the US was founded on slavery.
Putting people to high standards and then saying to supporters of a view "SEE!" is a bad arguing method.
Well if you know the Confederacy was a racist state, why do you have Nor do I think the Confederacy was racist. on your userpage?
Updated to say, don't you think you should qualify Nor do I think the Confederacy was racist. to represent what you really think?
Please, since you've spent so much effort describing what you don't think, tell us clearly what you do think.
- The Confederacy was founded mainly on states' rights
- Abe didn't care about slavery as much as people think he did
- The Union at that time could be easily compared to the Great Britain under King George III with regards to secession movements.
It was FLAWED, it wasn't made by God. What I think you mean is "Was the Confederacy made for slavery", which my response would be no. It was made for states' rights, and free blacks fought in the War for Southern Independence.
Also, I DO NOT have a Southern accent.
- The Confederacy was founded mainly on states' rights
- Yes, this is a partly true statement.
- Abe didn't care about slavery as much as people think he did
- Also true.
- The Union at that time could be easily compared to the Great Britain under King George III with regards to secession movements.
- This is not even wrong.
Let's talk about this.
What you fail to understand about the Confederacy was that the reason the Southern states seceded was because they felt that their way of life was mortally threatened by the election of Abraham Lincoln, who was an anti-slavery (not an abolitionist, of course) Northerner. Their way of life included economic, political, and social elements--some historians even contend that the North and South were not simply different economic regions, but two entirely separate civilizations--and differed from the North in all of these elements. One government could no longer contain both societies, especially given the expansionist tendencies of both (c.f. the wp:Ostend Manifesto and wp:Kansas-Nebraska Act and its repercussions), so the South saw no choice but to break away. What you specifically fail to realize is just how integral the institution of slavery was to Southern socioeconomics, and how the subjugation of blacks was not simply an economic policy but a societal necessity. The Confederacy, the culmination of the seceding states' effort at housing their society in a new government, is simply inextricable and inseparable from that subjugation.
You correctly point out that the chief reason given for secession by the Southern states was that under the "compact" theory of the Constitution, it was a "state's right" to secede. Lincoln, the North and ultimately the Supreme Court affirmed the "contract" theory of the Constitution, meaning that the federal government was supreme. This issue was put to bed after the war in a legal sense, but persists to the present day in the political invective in conservative Southern states. States' rights were the legal foundation of the Confederacy. But the moral, economic, and social foundation of the Confederacy was the aforementioned subjugation of blacks. That's not to say that states' rights were not vitally important to the Confederate States--they were, and that probably helped them lose the war--but that the Confederacy was created to preserve the Southern way of life, their civilization if you will, which was based on the subjugation of blacks in all respects. States' rights were merely a justification of their continuation of that way of life.
It was only a part of their way of life, a part that would have ended. Slavery wouldn't have lasted long.
Please try to read what I wrote. Perhaps I should rewrite it at a seventh-grade reading level?
You: "It was only a part of their way of life, a part that would have ended."
Me: "What you specifically fail to realize is just how integral the institution of slavery was to Southern socioeconomics, and how the subjugation of blacks was not simply an economic policy but a societal necessity. The Confederacy, the culmination of the seceding states' effort at housing their society in a new government, is simply inextricable and inseparable from that subjugation. [...] the moral, economic, and social foundation of the Confederacy was the aforementioned subjugation of blacks. [...] States' rights were merely a justification of their continuation of that way of life."
You: "What you specifically fail to realize is just how integral the institution of slavery was to Southern socioeconomics, and how the subjugation of blacks was not simply an economic policy but a societal necessity. The Confederacy, the culmination of the seceding states' effort at housing their society in a new government, is simply inextricable and inseparable from that subjugation. [...] the moral, economic, and social foundation of the Confederacy was the aforementioned subjugation of blacks. [...] States' rights were merely a justification of their continuation of that way of life."
Me: "It was at the time needed, however needs changed. The South seemed just fine without the slaves. The problem is what Abe Lincoln did the South; that caused the real problem for the South.
If slavery was such a big part of Southern life than how come that only about 10% of Confederates owned slaves?"
Uh, because there were very few big plantation owners. Here's a quick summary of the Southern economy, and the relevant part: "Because large slaveholders owned most of the region’s slaves, wealth was more stratified than in the North. In the Deep South, the middle class held a relatively small proportion of the region’s property, while wealthy planters owned a very significant portion of the productive lands and slave labor. In 1850, 17 percent of the farming population held two-thirds of all acres in the rich cotton-growing regions of the South."
Nebby has addressed the 10% figure, so:
"The South seemed just fine without the slaves."
Yes, after decades of Reconstruction. The transition from a plantation-, agriculture-based economy did not happen overnight, and it never fully took place. Furthermore, even after slavery itself was eliminated, the status of blacks (and of course black plantation workers) did not change very much; blacks were very much still an underclass in the South, especially after the Union troops left in 1877 - this culminated in Jim Crow. Put simply, the South did fine after Reconstruction without the "slaves", but still relied upon blacks as an underclass.
"The problem is what Abe Lincoln did the South; that caused the real problem for the South."
Are you talking about stuff like wp:Sherman's March to the Sea? Reconstruction? You haven't described what this "problem" was.
Blue has answered this very, very well. I was going to say things along similar lines, but I'll cut it down to this:
You're right, the Union was racist, the CSA was racist. But we shouldn't judge historical characters by our standards, but their contemporary standards. What would now be considered homophobic would be considered perfectly normal. Would we say the Founding Fathers were homophobes? No.
But, in the context of that period, there can still be such a thing as a racist state. If a state if FORMED on the principle that one race can own another, when slavery has been illegal in Great Britain and the Northern United States for decades, and they're clinging onto their 'negroes,' then they are racist by contemporary standards.
I simply don't think the statement, "The CSA wasn't (mainly) racist," is a sensible one. Going back so far, when racism wasn't neccecarily viewed as a 'bad thing,' it still means something, and the CSA was the embodiment of that.
